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Gun Makers Learn From Tobacco Fight

In a battle that echoes the attack on the tobacco industry, advocates of gun control are hitting the nation's gun manufacturers with a torrent of litigation and legislation to force those companies to make safer guns and accept responsibility for the violence their products can cause.

Just as anti-smoking forces took on tobacco companies on many fronts, gun-control advocates are drawing on the same tactics as well as those used by consumer groups against the automobile and liquor industries. Mindful of the outcomes of those disputes, the gun industry is fighting back.

The battle over guns is taking place in the courts, where gun-control supporters are testing new legal theories; at the state and local levels, where gun safety regulations have been enacted, and in Washington, where the gun industry has pulled away from the National Rifle Association, long the spokesman for firearms in the nation, and is now speaking more for itself.

In fact, in an intriguing twist on the tobacco disputes, gun executives say they want to follow the ''alcohol industry model'' rather than the ''tobacco industry model'' by responding to safety concerns rather than automatically resisting. Just as liquor executives thwarted critics by campaigning against drunken driving, gun makers say they want to convince the public that they are dedicated to making safer weapons and saving lives.

''On every possible front, there is an attack'' from gun-control advocates, said Robert Ricker, a lobbyist for the American Shooting Sports Council, the industry trade association. ''They are trying to demonize our products and make it politically incorrect to be a gun owner, just like it is to be a smoker. So we, as an industry, have to become pro-active and look at these problems differently than the tobacco industry did.''

''We take heart from tobacco and cars,'' said Sarah Brady, chairwoman of Handgun Control Inc., a nonprofit group, and wife of James Brady, the former White House press secretary who was seriously wounded with President Ronald Reagan in a 1981 assassination attempt.

''Guns are an industry whose secrecy, opportunism, cynicism and disdain for consumer protection make it the next logical target for reform in America,'' Ms. Brady said.

The Massachusetts Attorney General recently proposed the novel theory that guns can be regulated under existing consumer safety laws. He is moving to ban inexpensive handguns known as Saturday night specials and to require child locks on guns. In the last year, more than 30 California cities adopted ordinances requiring child locks on handguns, and Chicago did the same this year. In New York, a closely watched legal case in which most gun makers are being sued over how guns are sold is moving toward trial.

Advocates of gun control are also bringing legal cases to expand the definition of product liability law. They are seeking to hold gun makers responsible for violent shootings if their products fail to have the latest safety features and are sold in ways that get them to criminals.

These advocates are not asserting, as in most product liability cases, that the gun industry makes defective goods. Rather, they say that because guns are so lethal, the conduct of gun makers in designing and selling their products creates a legal accountability.

''We want to make the gun industry accountable for violence in a way it has never been held accountable before,'' said Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, a nonprofit organization.

The $2 billion firearms industry, battered by slumping profits and a poor public image, has already made it clear it does not want to suffer the same fate as the tobacco industry.

''Everyone can vividly remember seeing those tobacco executives parade up to Capitol Hill and deny that tobacco was habit forming,'' said Mr. Ricker, the lobbyist. ''Everyone knew it was ridiculous. We are not going to go before Congress and say that guns are not dangerous and that kids are not killed with them.''

As a result, the industry is distancing itself from the N.R.A., which long held sway in Washington with lavish campaign contributions and emotional Second Amendment pleas regarding the right to bear arms. To this end, executives of the nation's eight largest gun manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson, a subsidiary of Tomkins P.L.C. of Britain, and Beretta USA, a subsidiary of the Italian arms maker Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta S.p.A., stood alongside President Clinton and law-enforcement officers on the White House lawn in October to announce they would voluntarily install child safety locks on handguns. This announcement was notable on several counts: The rifle association was not present, nor were handgun opponents, and in return for the voluntary agreement, the White House dropped its call to require such locks.

''The gun industry has become more sophisticated,'' said David Tinker, editor of Firearms Business, a trade publication. ''This voluntary gun lock was a positive step and smart politics in the face of what would have happened. In just a few years, Congress would have required it.''

The industry has to bend to prosper. Sales of firearms have been flat for a decade, with production settling at 3.9 million domestic guns in 1996, the last year for which figures are available. Most gun makers are small companies with historical legacies, like Colt Industries, the Remington Arms Company and Smith & Wesson, that have had brushes with bankruptcy and sometimes had to be acquired to survive.

The first lawsuits claiming that handguns were hazardous were filed about a decade ago. But only in the last two years has the movement gained enough momentum to force gun makers to respond.

''It's been a snowball effect,'' said Dr. Stephen P. Teret, head of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, ''and finally that snowball reached a critical mass.''

Most advocates of gun control say they are not seeking to eliminate guns but want manufacturers to incorporate safety features, just as car makers install seat belts and air bags. At the top of the list are child-proof locks and guns that are keyed so only their owners can use them. They also say they want guns to be sold only to reputable dealers and not to distributors who resell them at gun shows and flea markets.

''We're shifting the focus away from the person pulling the trigger to the person making the trigger,'' Dr. Teret said. ''There are lots of things gun manufacturers can do that won't take guns away from anyone but would reduce the incidence of gun accidents.''

Some manufacturers already sell guns in locked boxes; others have child locks. But Ronald Stewart, chief executive of the Colt's Manufacturing Company, said that because the industry was barely profitable, there was little money for research into safer guns.

''We are getting whipsawed and beat to death.'' Mr. Stewart said, ''and are getting no help for research.''

Much of that battering comes from hundreds of lawsuits filed in recent years. Right now, the most closely watched case is Hamilton v. Accutek, in Federal District Court in New York. The defendants are the handgun manufacturer Accutek, a subsidiary of the IEC Electronics Corporation that recently filed for bankruptcy liquidation; 48 gun manufacturers, and 34 gun distributors. It stems from the shooting of Jewish students on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994 by a Middle Eastern terrorist who used stolen assault weapons.

The suit contends that gun manufacturers should be held liable for the deaths of two people because they collectively sold handguns in ways that fostered a flow of firearms into criminal markets.

So far, the industry has dismissed these cases.

''The gun industry has dealt with litigation since it started,'' said Georgia Nichols, a lawyer and president of the American Shooting Sports Council. ''None of these new legal theories have been successful, and we don't think they will be.''

In Washington, the American Shooting Sports Council has tried to polish the industry's image by working with Government officials. The emerging prominence of this industry trade group points to the diverging interests of the gun makers and the rifle association.

''There's a big difference between what we and the gun makers do,'' said Tanya Metaksa, the chief lobbyist of the N.R.A., which gave $1.7 million in the last election, making it one of the bigger campaign donors. ''We deal with gun rights, and they deal with the gun business.''

Advocates of gun control say that, as in the tobacco battle, the road here will be bumpy and will go from the states to Washington.

''In the tobacco case, it was an issue where consumers at the state level drove and created national policy because national policy on tobacco was so weak,'' said Scott Harshbarger, the Attorney General of Massachusetts who extended consumer protection laws to guns. ''I take a lot of hope in that.''